Thursday, October 11, 2007

In the beginning William Castle created "House on Haunted Hill," a campy 1959 horror romp starring Vincent Price. Forty years later Warner Bros. remade the film starring a campy Geoffrey Rush in the Vincent Price role. Now, in 2007 we've got WB's direct-to-video sequel to the remake, "Return to House on Haunted Hill." I'm afraid to ask what comes next: A remake of the remake or a sequel to the sequel of the remake? My brain hurts.

While we're pondering such momentous questions, let me remind you that some of the best things about the 1999 remake were a roller-coaster ride early on, Rush's over-the-top histrionics, and a really spooky setting. Although the film quickly devolved into a dreary CGI-laden extravaganza, the building in which everything took place was creepy as all get-out. Unfortunately, what with the older script having used up the roller coaster angle and dispatched Rush's character, the only component left to the new filmmakers was the setting. It's not enough.

To recap the '99 film, an eccentric millionaire offered a large sum of money to a group of people if they could spend a night in a haunted house, in this case the long-abandoned Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. Then he tried to scare them to death. The thing was, it wasn't long before everyone discovered that ghosts actually did haunt the old, rambling edifice, and the spirits of the people who died there (at the hands of the demented Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt and in a 1931 patient revolt) came back to kill most of the guests for real.

In the present film, it's eight years later, and we meet Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti), the sister of a woman, Sara, who survived the fright night in '99. But as the new story begins, Sara dies of a suspicious suicide. Ariel investigates and discovers that her sister was in possession of a journal written by the very doctor, Vannacutt, whose patients murdered him. (Dr. Vannacutt is played in reprise by the endearing Jeffrey Combs of "Re-Animator" fame.) In Vannacutt's journal, the doctor told where he hid a statue, the Bashomet idol, which radiates evil and caused all the mischief in the first place. Sometimes, it's best for a movie not to explain too much; this idol business is a cheap trick better left to old movie serials of the 1930s.

Apparently, the statue is worth a fortune because everybody wants to get their hands on it, including a professor of archeology, Dr. Richard Hammer (Steven Pacy), who's been searching for it for twenty years; plus a pack of mean, nasty cutthroats and their leader, a mean, nasty archeologist named Desmond (Erik Palladino). So the gang of crooks kidnap Ariel and a friend, Paul (Tom Riley), and head out to the old hospital in search of the statue, with Professor Hammer, his friend Michelle (Cerina Vincent), and a college student, Kyle (Andrew-Lee Potts), coincidentally showing up at the same time and bent on the same mission.

This is the film's way of getting everybody together in the old building so the fun can start. Too bad it takes so long to begin, though, because it's already a third of the way into the story before anything even remotely interesting happens.

You can guess the rest. The designers of the building built it to lock down in case of a patient uprising, and that's exactly what happens as soon as the characters enter it. Nobody can leave. From then on, it's pure "Friday the 13th" cliché territory.

"The statue belongs in a museum, not in the hands of some private collector," says Dr. Hammer to the nefarious Desmond. Does that line sound like one from any other movie you've seen? What with the characters splitting up and going in different directions, the character of Desmond being a fellow archeologist, his name sounding rather wimpy for a villain, and the name "Hammer" being an obvious tribute to Hammer Films, so popular in horror circles of the 1950s ,'60s, and '70s, I began thinking maybe "Return to House on Haunted Hill" was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to all our old action and horror-movie favorites. But, alas, the film is far too grim and straightforward for such sly distinctions. Did you ever see "Ghost Ship" or "Thir13en Ghosts"? Same deal.

In the beginning William Castle created "House on Haunted Hill," a campy 1959 horror romp starring Vincent Price. Forty years later Warner Bros. remade the film starring a campy Geoffrey Rush in the Vincent Price role. Now, in 2007 we've got WB's direct-to-video sequel to the remake, "Return to House on Haunted Hill." I'm afraid to ask what comes next: A remake of the remake or a sequel to the sequel of the remake? My brain hurts.

While we're pondering such momentous questions, let me remind you that some of the best things about the 1999 remake were a roller-coaster ride early on, Rush's over-the-top histrionics, and a really spooky setting. Although the film quickly devolved into a dreary CGI-laden extravaganza, the building in which everything took place was creepy as all get-out. Unfortunately, what with the older script having used up the roller coaster angle and dispatched Rush's character, the only component left to the new filmmakers was the setting. It's not enough.

To recap the '99 film, an eccentric millionaire offered a large sum of money to a group of people if they could spend a night in a haunted house, in this case the long-abandoned Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. Then he tried to scare them to death. The thing was, it wasn't long before everyone discovered that ghosts actually did haunt the old, rambling edifice, and the spirits of the people who died there (at the hands of the demented Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt and in a 1931 patient revolt) came back to kill most of the guests for real.

In the present film, it's eight years later, and we meet Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti), the sister of a woman, Sara, who survived the fright night in '99. But as the new story begins, Sara dies of a suspicious suicide. Ariel investigates and discovers that her sister was in possession of a journal written by the very doctor, Vannacutt, whose patients murdered him. (Dr. Vannacutt is played in reprise by the endearing Jeffrey Combs of "Re-Animator" fame.) In Vannacutt's journal, the doctor told where he hid a statue, the Bashomet idol, which radiates evil and caused all the mischief in the first place. Sometimes, it's best for a movie not to explain too much; this idol business is a cheap trick better left to old movie serials of the 1930s.

Apparently, the statue is worth a fortune because everybody wants to get their hands on it, including a professor of archeology, Dr. Richard Hammer (Steven Pacy), who's been searching for it for twenty years; plus a pack of mean, nasty cutthroats and their leader, a mean, nasty archeologist named Desmond (Erik Palladino). So the gang of crooks kidnap Ariel and a friend, Paul (Tom Riley), and head out to the old hospital in search of the statue, with Professor Hammer, his friend Michelle (Cerina Vincent), and a college student, Kyle (Andrew-Lee Potts), coincidentally showing up at the same time and bent on the same mission.

This is the film's way of getting everybody together in the old building so the fun can start. Too bad it takes so long to begin, though, because it's already a third of the way into the story before anything even remotely interesting happens.

You can guess the rest. The designers of the building built it to lock down in case of a patient uprising, and that's exactly what happens as soon as the characters enter it. Nobody can leave. From then on, it's pure "Friday the 13th" cliché territory.

"The statue belongs in a museum, not in the hands of some private collector," says Dr. Hammer to the nefarious Desmond. Does that line sound like one from any other movie you've seen? What with the characters splitting up and going in different directions, the character of Desmond being a fellow archeologist, his name sounding rather wimpy for a villain, and the name "Hammer" being an obvious tribute to Hammer Films, so popular in horror circles of the 1950s ,'60s, and '70s, I began thinking maybe "Return to House on Haunted Hill" was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to all our old action and horror-movie favorites. But, alas, the film is far too grim and straightforward for such sly distinctions. Did you ever see "Ghost Ship" or "Thir13en Ghosts"? Same deal.

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